


Pushing Daisies

by c000kiesandcream



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pushing Daisies Fusion, Angst, Baking, Canon Compliant, Dead People, Death, Detective, M/M, Mention of canon dog death, Romance, Skating, ish, more baking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 11:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11530977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c000kiesandcream/pseuds/c000kiesandcream
Summary: Yuuri Katsuki is a figure skater with an extraordinary gift.He can bring people back from the dead.But when he brings one of the most prolific figure skaters in the world back to life, he has a very difficult decision to make.Because if he touches him again, well, then he's dead for real.





	Pushing Daisies

**Author's Note:**

> Writers block _sucks_ but this finally happened!
> 
> I love Pushing Daisies, I love Yuri!!! On Ice and I love angst so please enjoy this ride of cake, comfort, distance, and Detective!Celestino!
> 
> I may be back to re-read and edit this (slightly) but if I don't post now I never will
> 
> Enjoy ✨

Yuuri Katsuki was a boy when he discovered his gift.

Granted, at the age of nine, discovering that you can wake the dead doesn’t exactly seem like a ‘gift’, especially when you consider the many conditions that come with such a specific talent.

But a gift is still a gift, and unfortunately for Yuuri, he discovered his in the strangest possible way.

When his mother told him that his great aunt Miyoko had passed in her sleep, he was, of course, quite sad. His first reaction was to ask where people go when they die, and with a shake of her head, his mom had replied that even she didn’t have an answer, but in the case of his aunt it was better than what she had been through here on Earth.

So Yuuri found himself stood in front of a casket overflowing with flowers, fiddling with his cufflinks while he wondered where he should place his own bouquet. Behind him, his mother gently pushed his shoulder, encouraging him to follow his sister to step up to the coffin and pay his respects. As he pulled himself onto his tiptoes to look into the box, he was impressed with how many flowers had fit in the tiny box. He could barely see the plain white kimono that was draped loosely over his aunt’s body, but he wasn’t looking for her clothes. His eyes were transfixed to her sallow skin, stretched and sunken in the artificial light. Her skin looked to him as though it was painted with the wax seals on the old letters he had seen during his school trip to the museum. The yellowed papers in his mind matched her sickly skin tone.

He wanted to touch her face to see if it had the same consistency, but a queue was forming, and he knew that would be incredibly disrespectful. Instead, he copied what the rest of his relatives had done, and leaned up to plant a gentle kiss on her forehead.

As he leaned up, his fingers clung to the side of the casket, and when his lips finally made contact, something strange happened. A spark that bounced through Yuuri’s skin shocked him back, causing him to fall into his mother’s arms. She caught him, but before she could ask if he was okay, something weird and wonderful happened.

Miyoko Katsuki, the woman who had been declared dead for over 24 hours, coughed, pushing scraggy fingers through the ocean of petals to pull herself into a sitting position.

Someone from the back of the room screamed, but other than that a piercing silence hung over the room, watching for something, anything to happen.

Her grey hair was pinned up, out of her face, and Yuuri stared at how some of the strands fell down to cover the newborn flush that was filling her cheeks with every passing moment. The waxy sheen that he was sure had been there a moment ago had vanished, and she couldn’t have looked any less dead.

A smile stretched across her lips, and she turned to Yuuri’s mother slightly confused.

“Hiroko. What are you doing here?” Her voice was hoarse, and she coughed again before trying to pull herself out of her coffin.

She struggled for a moment, and the first person to step forward to help was Yuuri. However, when he held his hand out to help her down, and her fingertips brushed his palm, he was struck with the same strange sensation of electricity running through his skin. He pulled his hand back, and his aunt fell back into the same dead sleep she had been ten seconds before.

A gasp behind him fell on deaf ears. He leaned back into the box and touched her cheek this time, expecting her to spring back up. Instead she lay there, peaceful, waxy, and really dead.

After the initial confusion, Hiroko led Yuuri from the hubbub in the centre of the room away to his father, who kept asking if he was okay. They left shortly after that, and Yuuri didn’t say a word the whole way home.

That night, while the rest of the onsen slept, Yuuri lay looking at the ceiling, wondering what had happened.

How had it been that his aunt had woken from the dead? And why did Yuuri feel such a strong shock when he had touched her?

A fly buzzing against the window pane reached a sticky end when Yuuri hit it with his pillow. It flickered with life for a brief moment, before its wings finally lay still amongst the dust.  

Yuuri watched curiously, before tentatively stretching his finger out. He poked it, and to his surprise the fly jumped back into life, flying angrier than before and battering its head against the glass. After a few seconds, Yuuri couldn’t bear to watch, so he lifted his hand and allowed it to fly against his skin.

As he expected, when it bashed its head against his palm, the same sensation fizzled across his palm, and the fly fell with a thud to the windowsill. He would have sworn that he saw a spark in the dark of his room.

He didn’t sleep that night, or the next. As the internet back then was not exactly the resource it is today, Yuuri decided after the second sleepless night to visit the ancient library around the corner from his school.

When he arrived, he was almost distracted by the row of manga novels he was currently reading. He shook his head, before asking the kindly old man behind the desk where he would find books about death, smiling widely despite the growing concern on the adult’s face. Yuuri was taken to a well-lit aisle, and was handed several books on what happens after we die. They were mostly picture books, illustrated to help young children cope with the loss of a parent or a dog.

Yuuri knew this wasn’t what he needed. He had hoped to be taken out the back, where the man would reveal rows of ancient, dusty books written in ancient languages that only he could understand. Dejectedly, he rifled through the few books he had, before deciding to look for himself.

He waited until the man was serving another customer, before he snuck up the stairs to the adult’s reference section. An aisle marked ‘science’ sparked his interest, and he pulled the step stool along with him while he traipsed down the double sided aisles. With wide eyes, he wandered down rows and rows of books on x-rays, astrophysics, drugs, plant species, hydrocarbons, engineering, owl hunting patterns, and other strange and useless books. He considered taking the book on astrophysics home, carefully pulling it into his lap and marvelling at the star maps that he pulled out. However, he decided against it when he realised he couldn’t understand too many of the characters and mathematical problems. While Yuuri was one of the brightest in his class, even he was not that bright.

Admitting defeat after a tiresome ten minutes, Yuuri settled on checking out one of the next installments of his current series. The man behind the counter considered Yuuri with careful eyes, before shrugging off his original request and packing up the book he had chosen.

On the walk home, Yuuri balanced on the kerb, falling into the road every so often, laughing as he did so. He wasn’t sure what had happened at his aunt’s funeral, nor was he certain he could explain what had happened in his room with the bug. He spotted a dead leaf that was sitting on the floor, so he skipped over to pick it up. Again, the electricity flashed in his fingertips, and before his eyes the torn and battered fronds of the leaf filled out, and faded brown to amber to the brightest green. He glanced around, but the street was empty.

He sat under the tree from which it had fallen, and waited for a while, watching to see what would happen. Surely the leaf didn’t just continue to live? He knew enough about science to know that energy is never created or destroyed, only conserved and transferred. More leaves fell around him from the breeze through the branches, and after a few minutes he gave up, dropping the leaf and heading home.

What he didn’t see was the spark that had selected a random leaf on the tree, sending shivers through the bark, and killing almost every leaf on its branches. When he passed the tree on his way to school the next day, he wondered what had happened to it. The wood had turned an ashy grey, and the leaves had crumbled to dust at its base. He stared for a moment before running down the road. The tree was soon forgotten when he got on the bus.

* * *

 

Years passed, and Yuuri grew into a handsome young man. He hadn’t had to attend any more funerals, which he was grateful for, and he only used his talent to revive the fresh fruit and vegetables in his parent’s kitchen. His mother couldn’t offer an explanation as to why the peppers looked better for a week after she had bought them, and the patrons that visited the onsen begged for the secret as to why her vegetables were so fresh. Her only response is that her son helped prepare them, and he prepared them with love.

Occasionally, one of the houseplants would wither unexpectedly, but still Hiroko insisted on filling every nook and cranny with overflowing vases. They brightened up the darkened corridors, but it wasn’t long before Yuuri made the connection. He still used his talent on the wrinkled fruit, but he tried not to kill more than 3 plants a month.

While living in the onsen, Yuuri balanced his time between school, reading, and helping in the restaurant kitchen. His mother had instilled in him from a young age an inherent love of food and cooking. Yuuri would spend many evenings in the kitchens at the onsen, reading reams of recipes his mother had copied by hand, and by the time he was ready to graduate high school, he could cook anything his mother could from memory. He had a particular fondness for baking, and had cooked a variety of Japanese, American, and British recipes during his studies. The kitchen was his safe space, and during his exams he made sure there was a new dessert available for every single meal.

When he wasn’t baking or studying, the rest of Yuuri’s time was spent training. He had spent a lot of his time as a child at his mother’s friend’s ballet studio, but it soon became clear that this was not just a hobby. Yuuri clearly had a gift, and so his teacher had encouraged him to take skating lessons to further his training. After his first lesson at the local rink, he (along with his ballet teacher) agreed that he should continue to train, and push himself even further. So a hobby that took up an hour a week soon became a hobby that took up three hours every other night, and his dedication to the craft did not go unnoticed. It soon became clear that he was incredibly talented, and it wasn’t long before he started competing at the junior level. His best friends from school encouraged this talent, helping him complete homework during his breaks off the ice, and reading around the sport. They purchased subscriptions to skating magazines, utilised their local video store, and watched every single televised skating event available to them.

One name would consistently appear on Yuuri’s radar.

Victor Nikiforov.

He would pour over interviews from the mysterious, young Russian skater making waves in the senior division. He was strong, powerful, a dangerous opponent, and, apparently, the world’s hottest figure skater.

According to the magazines.

Victor was someone that Yuuri could look up to, and so with a number of posters plastered across his wall and rink locker, Yuuri continued to push himself above and beyond what he thought his body could take. Soon, he was travelling all over Japan and Asia for competitions in his bracket. By the time he was ready for college, he was invited to live in America to study and train as a professional figure skater.

His parents were thrilled, of course, but Yuuri worried. A few of the other onsens in the neighbourhood had closed down, and he knew that money was tight. Yuuri’s gift saved them so much money every month, and he was invaluable to the running of the place. However, his parents insisted, so he packed up his life, and travelled over 6,000 miles to Detroit.

* * *

 

For a long while, Yuuri’s gift went unnoticed.

Two years, in fact.

Without the need to revitalise wilted fruits and vegetables, Yuuri managed to live a reasonably normal life. He went to school, he trained with his new American coach, and he attended domestic and foreign competitions. Sadly, the dorm he called his home was not fitted with a fully equipped service kitchen, so his second favourite hobby fell to the wayside as he drowned in glittery costumes and algebraic equations.

He lined his walls with posters of figure skaters from all over the world, and they served as his inspiration. He soon forgot that it had been months since he baked, and he lost himself in choreography, competition, and Victor’s training reels.

Scouring the internet, he downloaded several recordings of his idol’s skates, and when he found he couldn’t sleep, or he was stressed with work, he would walk down to the rink and practice the routines over and over again. He had spent so many years of his life following Victor, copying his routines, and wishing that he could meet him in competition.

Distracted by his increasing popularity as a figure skater, and his increasingly difficult studies, Yuuri almost forgot about his talent.

It wasn’t until halfway through Yuuri’s second year of university that his gift was even discovered by another person. And the circumstances in which they were discovered are stranger than the gift itself.

Yuuri was on his way into the back of the ice rink, keys jangling in his hand as he walked across the parking lot. He had his headphones in, listening to an interview that Victor had given earlier that week. As it was raining, his hoodie was pulled low to cover his face. His feet sloshed as he made his way across the empty space, as he always did. But little did he know, his life was about to change forever.

Well, at least for the foreseeable future.

What Yuuri couldn’t see was the black car was in pursuit of an even blacker motorbike on the road towards the rink. The motorcyclist of which had failed to wear a helmet, or gloves, or anything more than a t-shirt and jeans. The car gained on the bike very quickly, the bumper catching the back wheel just as the bike turned the corner into the parking lot. The wet ground combined with the force of the car sent the bike spinning one way and the rider another, rolling again and again, breaking bones and burning skin as he skid across the asphalt to land at Yuuri’s feet.

Yuuri screamed, dropping his phone and his gym bag noisily as he caught his breath. Never in his life had he seen so much blood. Kneeling down, he reached out a hand to check the pulse of the man who was practically tied into a knot. When he did so, the instant rush of electricity charged his skin, the spark lit the dull grey air, and the man started breathing quite heavily.

“Move!” He yelled, and visibly tried to move his limbs despite them all being broken in several places.

“Erm, sorry,” Yuuri muttered, touching him again, charge tingling down his arm as the guy returned to being dead.

In front of him, the car that had chased the cyclist had stopped, the man behind the driver’s seat had started to leave the car before freezing to watch as Yuuri had brought back the guy he had just knocked off his bike at 70 miles an hour.

He was silent for a while, and Yuuri collected his phone to call the police.

“Wait, no need, I’ve already called for backup,” the driver stepped further from the car, out towards Yuuri, causing him again to jump and again to drop his already shattered phone to the floor.

“Who are you?” He asked, stepping back while he took in the scene before him.

The driver was tall, holding his hands up to show that he didn’t have a weapon or anything on him. He was wearing a long, tan coat, which was only slightly lighter than his hair, which was scraped back into a ponytail that was draped over his shoulder. His eyes were kind, if slightly mischievous, and he smiled despite the situation.

Yuuri’s eyes trailed down.

Dead guy on the floor, aggressively trying to get away from the unmarked black car, with full dash cam and radio system in front of the steering wheel, and flashing red and blue lights.

“I’m a detective, Detective Celestino,” he replied, smiling. “And today might just be your lucky day.”

While they waited for more police to show up, Yuuri tried and failed to convince the detective that what he had seen was a final rush of adrenaline before the criminal had dropped dead. The detective, who insisted Yuuri call him Ciao Ciao, bought none of it. The rain had stopped, so the two were sat on the hood of his car.

“What I think happened is you were overcome with a human need to check for life, and you did, and some weird moment connected the two of you, and you brought him back to life for, what, 5 seconds?” His eyes were narrow as he watched for Yuuri’s expression, but they widened when they saw exactly what they wanted. “Aha! I knew it, you’re magic, kid,” he laughed, nudging Yuuri to try and lighten the mood. “How do you feel about coming to work for me?”

“Police work?” Yuuri asked, glancing towards the doors of the rink. He could hear sirens in the distance.

“Casual police work. See, I’m a pretty good detective, but some cases aren’t as clean cut as this one.” He waved his hand out to the guy on the floor as he spoke. Yuuri had tried not to look directly at him since bringing him back to life. “You could really help me up my numbers. Now, Kanako is gonna come over here and asked what happened, but I reckon we can keep the magic between us, yeah?” He winked, just as a female detective slammed the door on her police car. She was fast approaching, and Celestino was waiting for an answer.

“Sure thing,” Yuuri muttered, turning back to look at the guy one last time, before following Celestino to who he assumed was Kanako. 

When Yuuri was finally allowed to go home, he forgot about the calling card, forgot about the calls from his coach that had blown up his phone, and collapsed into a deep, dreamless sleep. It was 1am, and he had been at the station answering questions and filling out statements for several hours. After that, Celestino had offered to drop him home, and on the way they had stopped at a diner just off campus. They stayed for little over an hour, and while Yuuri ate Celestino tried to convince him that his gift could be invaluable to the force.

Eventually, Yuuri caved.

“Okay, I will, but I have a few conditions.” He chewed as he spoke, and waited for his cue. The detective nodded, and Yuuri put down his burger.

“Number one, this stays between us. I don’t want to be famous for something I can’t control. Second, I don’t have time to work every single case, so I’ll need some notice. And third, you buy me dinner whenever you need me,” Yuuri breathed, taking up his burger and continuing his meal. Celestino laughed.

“Deal. I’ll get the credit anyway,” he chuckled, placing a blank card and a pen on the table.

Yuuri nodded, writing down his details and finishing his food.

* * *

 

Yuuri's final two years of college went a little faster than the first two, mostly because he was insanely busy all the time.

His coach had acquired a new student, a Thai skater named Phichit Chulanont, who had also been awarded college scholarships for his skating prowess. He was bubbly, friendly, and incredibly observant. The two of them were placed together in a new buddy scheme issued by the university, but they hit it off straight away. They worked, trained, ate, and slept together, their timetables almost identical.

Apart from Yuuri’s late night excursions, which he was sure were a secret.

He would sneak out of the dorm at 1am to find Celestino parked in front of his dorm. Climbing down the drainpipe was incredibly difficult, but he would almost always manage it without doing too much damage. When he was on the ground, he would jog across the green to the car, and Celestino would take him for burgers and homicide.

These were the cases where the victims had no identity, the criminals had no motive, and the police had no leads. Yuuri would touch them, bring them back to life, and ask three questions: who are you, why are you dead, and who did it?

In Japan, he had timed how long it took for the houseplants to die when he restored the strawberries, and it was no more nor less than 60 seconds.

Now, when you’ve been dead, 60 seconds is not long enough to accept the fact that you were dead, that you’ve probably been murdered, and that you will be dead again very shortly.

Using the watch Yuuri’s dad had given him as a farewell present, they time the interactions to the second. If they are even one second over, well, that doesn’t bear thinking about.

So Yuuri wakes the dead, solves the case, puts them back to sleep, and heads home.

It took his roommate only a week to realise that Yuuri was sneaking out at 1am, but he didn’t bother to ask why.

Instead, he decided to sneak out with him, follow him on his bike, and see what shady dealings Yuuri was indulging in while the rest of the world was asleep.

However, Celestino was sharp enough to notice that Yuuri’s roommate was following. He managed to lose him, but Yuuri was too on edge to go through with their usual plans.

When Celestino dropped Yuuri back, Phichit hadn’t returned, so he quickly changed for bed, and feigned sleep. Phichit eventually returned, having given up the chase and instead choosing a late night run to his favourite fast food chain.

In the morning, Yuuri ducked out before Phichit was awake, and he spent the next two days avoiding him. Eventually, Phichit gave up texting him, instead leaving a post-it note on his pillow.

 

_Whatever you are doing, I miss you and I won’t ask._

_But bring me a burger back next time._

 

The following day, Phichit was woken at 2am with a burger, some fries, and at least a half-assed story that Yuuri knew he wouldn’t believe.

“I mean it, you don’t need to know, but I can always bring back fries. Just don’t tell coach,” Yuuri laughed, sipping his coke while Phichit nodded.

“Yuuri, you’re, like, practically my best friend now. You could tell me if you wanted but if you don’t want to the least you can do is bring me junk.” 

* * *

 

By the time Yuuri finished college, he wasn’t quite sure how his life had turned out the way it had.

While the first year of his Senior career had gone just as well as his Junior career, something strange had happened in his final year. He continued to train, taking a couple of classes off during his first semester to prepare for the Grand Prix Circuit. It was his first year competing in what was one of the more prolific competitions of the skating world, but the pressure to perform was too great.

By November, Yuuri had managed to secure a position in the final, and he waited with bated breath to hear who he was competing against.

The night of the announcement, he had a call from Celestino about a new case, and while he wanted nothing more than to wait for the announcement, he had promised that when he was back in Detroit he would always say yes to Celestino’s cases.

He spent the whole journey to the police station glued to his phone, scanning and refreshing the webpage over and over again to see who had placed in the final. Celestino led him through the darkened hall and into the onsite morgue, where he clicked on the lights, and waited with his arms folded for Yuuri’s attention.

After 30 seconds, Celestino leaned forward and locked Yuuri’s phone for him.

“Hey!” Yuuri called, the sound echoing around the clinical room. “Oh,” he sighed, when he realised where they were.

“Yes. Oh. Now, you promised I’d have your attention if I needed it back in Detroit-” Yuuri held his hand up, putting his phone away.

He walked over to the table, where a young woman was lying face down on the gurney. Her mousey hair was matted, and a similar colour to the detective’s, but her skin was almost green in the fake fluorescent light. There was a large gash across her shoulders, though there was not much blood despite the very deep cut.

“Ew,” Yuuri cringed, leaning forward to investigate the algae that had collected near the opening of the wound.

“Yeah, wait til you see her face,” Celestino laughed, gently pushing her shoulder to roll her over.

Someone had taken the same sharp knife and blindly cut at her face and chest. The wounds had the same greenish algae tainting the skin, and Yuuri cringed again.

“I hate this part,” he said to no one in particular. Celestino nodded.

“You’d think you would have gotten used to it by now,” he laughed, gesturing that now was as good a time as any to revive the poor girl and figure out who did this to her.

“Ready?” Yuuri twisted the dials on his watch so that they started at exactly one minute.

“Ready,” Celestino held her while Yuuri stretched his finger out to touch her cheek.

It never failed to make him jolt his arm back, the shock of bringing a person back far sharper than a punnet of fruit.

Colour filled her cheeks, and as the green mixed with the pinkish hue of life, her eyes fluttered open. She smiled, more algae and water pouring from her mouth.

“Hi. I’m Yuuri, you’re not in the best shape right now, we need-” He was cut off by the digital ringing tone vibrating in his pocket. “Sorry,” he muttered, pulling the phone out and allowing Celestino to continue.

“We need to know who did this to you. And who you are,” Celestino finished. Yuuri answered when he saw he’d missed a couple of calls already from Phichit.

_“Yuuri! Yuuri he did it-”_

“Who did what?”

 _“Victor! He’s in the final too,”_ Phichit practically squealed with excitement.

“Er, Yuuri,” Celestino called, his voice drowned in static as Yuuri stopped breathing.

Victor Nikiforov was in the final.

He was going to be competing against _Victor. Nikiforov._

“Yuuri, time!” Celestino’s voice was impatient, and he grabbed Yuuri’s hand to pull him back and force him to touch the poor victim on the table.

He managed to utter an apology before she fell back, limp and very really dead.

“Jeeze, that was close,” the detective grumbled, wiping his hands on his coat.

“Sorry.” Yuuri continued to scroll through his phone while they ate and while Celestino dropped him at home.

“Hey, you’ll do great no matter who you skate against,” Celestino offered, slapping Yuuri’s shoulder before wishing him luck in his next competition.

* * *

 

The Grand Prix Final came and went.

It did not end well.

The morning of the final event, Yuuri had received a phone call from his mom to inform him that his beloved childhood dog, Vicchan, had passed away.

While he was sad for the loss, he was more distracted with thinking up ways to resurrect him without a) killing another being and b) being noticed by his parents and everyone else in his hometown.

So with his head swimming with thoughts of his beloved dog, and his mind not focussed on working with the immense pressure of competition, he fluffed his jumps. Repeatedly.

He had messed up. After his very promising qualifying skates he had let the competition get the better of him, and he placed last.

Yuuri was, of course, distraught, and when he finally returned to Detroit with the world’s worst hangover after the banquet, he ignored the stream of calls from the detective. He still trained, still continued with his studies, and really tried his hardest to figure out his dog problem and the string of bad luck he was having.

He restarted the classes he had dropped for skating when it became apparent that the Grand Prix Final was only the beginning. After failing to qualify for Nationals, and then failing again to qualify for Four Continents, Yuuri had well and truly given up.

What he chose to do instead was to focus on his studies, graduate on the honour roll, and return to Japan.

Celestino had stopped calling, Phichit had moved home to train in Bangkok, and Yuuri was miserable.

Not only had he lost his dog, but his career lay in tatters before him.

There had been no Plan B but, for now, he was excited to return to the easy life at the onsen, baking and skating on his own time.

When he was reunited with his childhood friends, he decided to show them something impressive. While he hadn’t been training for his own choreographed routines, he had practiced skating to Victor’s free skate program last season.

As his skates cut the ice, and the music filled the rink, he could lose himself in the familiar jumps, the spins, the dance that he had watched repeatedly and forced his body to do. When the music finished, and he returned home, he felt entirely hopeless.

He needed something good to happen to him.

What Yuuri didn’t realise was that something good was an anonymous video of him skating Victor’s program had made its way via the internet into the hands of the man himself.

What Yuuri didn’t realise was that Victor had impulsively bought a one-way ticket to Japan.

What Yuuri didn’t realise was that something very bad was about to bring him close to his idol in the worst way possible.


End file.
